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The Complete Third Series Box Set starring David Tennant as The Doctor, Freema Agyeman as Martha Jones, and guest
stars Catherine Tate as Donna Noble, John Barrowman as Captain Jack Harkness, and Derek Jacobi and John Simm as the Master.
The contents are as follows…
- A textured outer cover featuring the Doctor and Martha on the front and a description of the contents on the back.
- An interior fold-out digipack box with the Doctor and the Master (the John Simm one) on its cover, and pictures of scenes throughout
the season on the back sides.
- An illustrated episode guide booklet, with a foreword by David Tennant.
- 6 discs. On all 6 discs, graphical menus, episode selection, and scene selection features, and subtitles for the hearing impaired.
(This time, the menus use a “Paradox Machine” theme instead of a straight TARDIS one as in the previous two seasons.)
16:9 Enhanced aspect ratio. Dolby Digital 5.1 sound.
All of the episodes are as complete and unedited as
they were when originally aired on the BBC.
(The SciFi Channel routinely makes cuts for extra commercial time, so many of these episodes will contain scenes you haven’t seen
if you’ve only watched it on that channel. In particular, the final episode, Last of the Time Lords, ran to 51 minutes on the BBC broadcast,
and the BBC removed 6 minutes before shipping it to
international broadcasters, the CBC in
the original 51-minute one.)
On Disc 1:
- The 60-minute Christmas 2006 special: The Runaway Bride Guest stars Catherine Tate as Donna Noble.
A bride mysteriously teleports from her march down to the aisle into the TARDIS. And when the Doctor tries to return her to the
church, they find themselves attacked by the return of the murderous robot Santas, and by a creature from the dawn of Earth’s history…
Commentary track by David Tennant (the Doctor) and Executive Producer Julie Gardner.
(This is the same commentary track that is available as a downloadable podcast from the official BBC Doctor Who website.)
- The 60-minute documentary Music and Monsters
This was a special documentary made by the Doctor Who Confidential team that mostly goes behind-the-scenes at a
Doctor Who music concert performed by the National Orchestra of Wales in November of 2006. It also includes some
behind-the-scenes footage of the making of The Runaway Bride.
- David Tennant’s Video Diary. 9 minutes of video shot by David Tennant on the sets of The Runaway Bride.
- Freema Agyeman’s Studio Tour. Freema Agyeman takes us on a tour of the Doctor Who sets during pre-production on the
yet-to-be-finished 2007 Christmas special, also including some glimpses of the Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures
productions. 18 minutes
- Series Three Deleted Scenes. An 18-minute package of 21 different deleted or extended scenes from throughout the series.
- Series Three Out-takes. A 5-minute reel of 30-or-so bloopers from throughout the series.
- BBC Trailers. 6 different trailers used by the BBC to advertise the broadcast of the upcoming new series on BBC1.
On Disc 2:
- Episode 1: Smith and Jones Introduces Freema Agyeman as Martha Jones, who stars in all the further episodes.
Medical student Martha Jones is having a rough day at work… first the Doctor turns up as her patient, and then her entire hospital
is transported to the Moon…
Commentary from Writer/Executive Producer Russell T. Davies and David Tennant.
- Episode 2: The Shakespeare Code
The
Doctor takes Martha back in time to
The plot thickens when Shakespeare announces the title of his next play, which the Doctor knows is lost to history, and when three
women in the audience start casting magical spells…
Commentary by actors David Tennant and Christina Cole (Lilith).
- Episode 3: Gridlock
The Doctor shows Martha the planet New Earth, but it’s very different to the one he showed Rose… everyone on the planet seems
to be stuck in a traffic jam, whilst being threatened by monsters from the Doctor’s past….
Commentary by Julie Gardner and actor Travis Oliver (
(The commentaries on this disc are all exclusive to this DVD set.)
- David Tennant’s Video Diary. 29 minutes of video shot by David Tennant on the sets of these three episodes.
- BBC Trailers. 2 trailers used to advertise The Shakespeare Code and Gridlock on BBC1.
On Disc 3:
- Episode 4: Daleks in
It’s
1930 in
used in a hideous experiment by the last surviving Daleks in the universe… the Cult of Skaro.
Commentary by actress Miranda Raison (Tallulah), Costume Designer Louise Paige, and Writer Helen Raynor.
- Episode 5: Evolution of the Daleks (Part 2 of this 2-part story)
Commentary by actors David Tennant, Nicholas Briggs (Dalek Voices), and On Set Visual FX Supervisor Barney Curnow
- Episode 6: The Lazarus Experiment
The
Doctor takes Martha home to
to be human, and indeed he shall as he’s invented a machine that can instantly reverse the process of aging. There may be some side
effects, though.
Commentary by actors David Tennant and Mark Gatiss (Professor Lazarus)
- Episode 7: 42
The Doctor and Martha answer a distress call from a spaceship that has exactly 42 minutes before it crashes into a sun.
Commentary by Russell T. Davies and Writer Chris Chibnall.
(The commentaries on this disc are also all exclusive to this DVD set.)
On Disc 4:
- Episode 8: Human Nature (Part 1 of this 2-part story)
To hide from powerful pursuers, the Doctor transforms himself into a human and rewrites his identity to believe he is John Smith,
an ordinary teacher at a boy’s school in
what to do if their pursuers find them (and they do), they don’t say anything about what to do if John Smith falls in love…
Commentary by Writer Paul Cornell, Director Charles Palmer, and
Music Composer
- Episode 9: The Family of Blood (Part 2 of this 2-part story)
Commentary by Producer Susie Liggat, Production Manager Tracie Simpson, and Supervising Art Director Arwel Wyn Jones.
- Episode 10: Blink
The Doctor is lost in time, parted from the TARDIS, sending messages of help to the future, to a young woman who can help
if only she can evade the Weeping Angels…
Commentary from Writer Steven Moffat and Music Composer
(The commentaries on this disc are also all exclusive to this DVD set.)
- David Tennant’s Video Diary. 40 minutes of video shot by David Tennant on the sets of the episodes on discs 3 and 4 and also
on the set of the special Doctor Who edition of The Weakest Link.
- 1 Easter Egg. Highlight the blank area below to discover what it is (as if you couldn’t guess) and how to find it.
Go into the Scene Selection menu and go to the last page
of the menu for Blink. Highlight scene selection number 9
(the one with a picture of
Larry’s eyes trying not to blink) and then press up. The caption above will become highlighted.
Select this, and you will see the entire uncut 5-minute
DVD Easter Egg from the episode of the Doctor talking to Sally Sparrow.
On Disc 5:
- Episode 11: Utopia (Part 1 of the 3-part finale) Guest stars John Barrowman as Capt. Jack Harkness and Derek Jacobi and John Simm as the Master.
The TARDIS tries to run away from the return of Captain Jack Harkness, all the way to the end of time, where the last vestiges of humanity
are trying to find Utopia, and where the Doctor finds out at last that he is not alone….
Commentary by David Tennant and Russell T. Davies
- Episode 12: The Sound of Drums (Part 2 of the 3-part finale)
Commentary by Julie Gardner and Producer Phil Collinson.
- Episode 13: Last of the Time Lords (Part 3 of the 3-part finale)
Commentary by Russell T. Davies, Julie Gardner, and Phil Collinson.
***********IMPORTANT
NOTE******************
The
first two commentaries are exclusive to this DVD set, however the last one is
the same podcast one that’s on the official
Doctor Who website.
On the Region 2 (UK) edition of this set, this commentary is instead a
new one with David Tennant,
Freema Agyeman,
and John Barrowman.
Writing in his regular
“Production Notes” column in Doctor
Who Magazine Issue 390 (page 4), Executive Producer Russell
T. Davies had this to say on this issue:
“The
Series Three box set contains the most wonderful commentary on Episode 13, with
David,
Freema,
and Johnny B all hooting away…except on the Region 1 version, which
contains the podcast
Commentary. So what
happened there?! Well, those three, let
loose with a microphone, started improvising
away, imagining that Martha Jones walked the world during
the Year That Never Was, spreading word of the
Doctor by folk-singing.
Which is a hoot! But unfortunately, they improvise the tune
around an established
song – I think it’s Streets of London – which couldn’t be copyright-cleared
for the American market. Not
without paying thousands of pounds! And they don’t just sing it once, oh
no, not those three – it becomes a
running joke throughout; if we’d edited it out, the
commentary would have sounded like Normal Collier’s
microphone routine.
(That’s dating me.) So we
had a choice with only days to go before the DVDs were due
to be duplicated.
Dump the whole thing or make it available only on Region 2? It was just too good to lose
completely, so Region 2 won out – but all of this
happened too late for the box set information to be changed.
So
apologies for that! But it had to be
preserved, in some shape or form, cos it’s such
a good laugh.
Consider
it a rarity!”
BBC America has now been able to clear
this commentary for free download either as a streaming file or as a 47 MB mp3
file at this address: http://bbcamerica.com/content/123/commentary.jsp
- BBC Trailers. Four trailers that advertised these episodes on BBC1.
On Disc 6:
- Doctor Who Confidential Cut Down. These are abbreviated versions of the documentary series Doctor Who Confidential
that accompanies each Doctor Who episode on its BBC broadcast. The originals ran 40-45 minutes. These are the
“highlight” versions that run 10-12 minutes each. There are 13 on this disc, one for every episode of the proper series.
Hosted by Anthony Head of School Reunion and Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame.
If one counts this series as a continuation of the original series, then these are ten stories, numbers 182-191, and episode numbers 734 through 747. Originally transmitted on Christmas 2006 and from March to June 2007 on BBC1.